1. Field of the Invention
The present invention relates to communication networking technologies, especially to network conferencing systems that can realize simultaneous transmission of voice, text, and various formats of data.
2. Description of the Related Arts
The advanced development in communication network and multimedia technologies has enabled the transmission of voice, text and various forms of data via networking media (such as Local Area Networks or LANs, or Internet systems). At present, commercially available products for transmitting multimedia data such as voice and text are Netmeeting from Microsoft and Internet Conference Professional from Volcaltec among others. These products have realized multiparty conferencing through LANs or Internet and enabled conference participants to fetch chat or whiteboard from other participants.
However, in Netmeeting of Microsoft, wherein the host of a conference A summons participants B, C and D for a network conference, host A first invites B to participate and there are voice (or speech) and data communications between A and B. The "data" as used herein includes non-vocalized text messages, whiteboard and other forms of data and excludes therefore voice, speech or audio data. But after C and D further join the network conferencing between A and B, C or D may only have data communication rather than voice communication with A and B. In other words, only parties A and B can enjoy voice communication, all other users can only undergo data communication and are unable to undergo voice communication. A multiple party voice communication is not realized.
Next, though improvements have been made in Internet Conference Professional by Vocaltec, its operation remains similar to that of Netmeeting by Microsoft. In Internet Conference Professional, conference host A summons B, C and D for participating in a network conference, host A has the privilege to choose one participant from B, C or D to undergo voice communication, while other conference participants are unable to listen to the contents of their talk. Only one party of the participants can communicate with the host at the same time, there is no voice communication among participants. Therefore, a multiple party voice communication is not realized.
To sum up, the commercially available products such as Netmeeting and Internet Conference Professional share two common flaws:
(1) Only one member of the conference participants can undergo voice or speech communication with the conference host, other participants can only undergo data communication, but not voice communication, among them. Such a system does not really actualize multiparty voice conferencing. PA1 (2) If the conference host system crashes, the network conferencing will be forced to end, since no voice and data communications can be undergone at the same time among conference participants.
Therefore, the purpose of this invention is to provide a multiparty network communication system and methods of troubleshooting thereof. By virtue of simultaneous voice and data communication, each conference participant may speak at the same time and also listen to the voice messages when other participants are speaking, and at the same time transmit textual messages or other forms of data. A multiparty voice communication network conferencing system is then realized.
Two connection methods have been proposed in the protocol of Video Conference H.323, namely: decentralized multipoint connection and centralized multipoint connection. In decentralized multipoint connection framework, since each user is directly connected to another user, the communication system with other users will not be affected when one user's communication system fails. However, in decentralized multipoint connection framework, the required processing capabilities for individual system users are high and the system will need an enormous bandwidth. Further, in centralized multipoint connection framework, individual users are connected to a multipoint control unit, which controls the proceeding of the conference and will require significant processing capabilities.